The Politicization of European Integration

The European Union has had to deal with a series of crises in the past, but currently, it faces an exceptional accumulation of tensions triggered by the eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, Islamic terrorism, the imperial aspirations of Putin and Brexit ambitions. Does the politicization of European integration increase under these conditions? And who are the possible drivers of a process of politicization of European integration? In this contribution I argue the politicization of European integration is not only time-dependent, but also embedded in national political conflict structures which vary systematically between three European regions: the Northwest, the South and the East of Europe. In order to understand the impact of contemporary crisis conditions on the politicization of European integration, I argue we have to take into account how these crisis conditions are linked to the underlying region-specific national conflict structures. Given these different national conflict structures, and given the different types of crises experienced by the populations of the three regions, the type of politicization of European integration is likely to be very different from one region to the other.